Watch a 101-Year-Old Painter Argue Against Talking About Art

Last year, T ran a very popular story rounding up a number of female artists who have continued to create — and in some cases, have only just begun to receive critical attention — late in life, well into their 70s, 80s and 90s. The oldest among them, the Cuban-American minimalist painter Carmen Herrera, turned 101 in May, and if anything, her star has only risen since our story was published. She had a show in May inaugurating the new New York outpost of Lisson Gallery; and today, the Whitney opens a solo show focusing on her work from 1948 to 1978. It’s auspicious timing for the release, on Netflix, of a new documentary about the artist by the award-winning filmmaker Alison Klayman (known most recently for “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”), an exclusive clip from which premieres above. In it, Herrera makes the case for artists not talking too much about their work: “You cannot talk about art; you have to art about art,” she says, smiling (and lightly pounding a desk for emphasis).

“When some people from Lisson Gallery told me about Carmen in fall 2013, I immediately made plans to visit her in New York. I thought she had a lot of wisdom to impart and a fascinating life story to accompany a stunning body of work, but also I was excited that telling her story would challenge me in several ways,” Klayman told T in an email. “I really wanted to understand how she found the drive to continue her same artistic practice for decades without recognition or external validation in her field — something that I realized there may not be a simple answer to. At this point, Carmen lives a mostly homebound life, so crafting a film in a single setting also struck me as a new challenge. Finally, after just completing a film with a strong male protagonist who played a lot with the limelight, I was also intrigued to focus on a woman artist who lived her life in a relatively simple and quiet manner.”

“The 100 Years Show” premieres on Netflix this Sunday, Sept. 18, and will also screen in conjunction with “Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight” at the Whitney, 99 Gansevoort St., New York, whitney.org.